Deuces Wild Boxed Set: Books 1-4: Beyond the Frontiers, Rampage, Labyrinth, Birthright

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  He’d been angling for a promotion, but as soon as he put through the paperwork on this particular mission, he was going to have to kiss that hope goodbye.

  He was still grumbling as he came around the door…and saw a human waiting for him in his office. She was perched cross-legged on his desk. When he came around the corner, she straightened up and gave him a cheery wave.

  “Hi, Borven.”

  “Ranger Two.” He had found out her identity while trying to figure out where to find her.

  From what he had read of her, he wanted to like her. She was known not to have any patience for people trying to get out of paying their dues, and she’d done some pretty impressive things. She seemed to have a particular hatred for Skaines.

  But she had also almost singlehandedly cost him his next promotion, so he couldn’t quite bring himself to like her.

  “I have something for you,” she told him. If she was put off by his grumpy manner, she didn’t let on. She uncurled her long legs from the desk and stood up, beckoning him over to look at the security feeds.

  Borven scanned through them. He didn’t see anything unusual, and finally he shrugged and looked at her.

  “What?”

  “There.” She pointed to one of the cells in the station’s tiny brig. “That is Rotciv.”

  “You found him?” Borven dropped into his seat, landing with a grunt. His face broke into a smile. “This is the best news I’ve had in…” He thought for a moment. “Weeks, honestly. I knew he was up to something, and with him locked up now …” He looked at her. “Well, I’ll admit, that is a nice present.”

  “Oh, it’s not just that he’s locked up.” Tabitha was bouncing on the soles of her feet. “You’ll also find documentation that you found out where he was and sent me after him.” She pointed to his computer. “I put it all in, backdated. No one will find out. Unless they’re a better hacker than me, of course… But,” She tilted her head to the side, considering, “that’s unlikely.”

  For a moment, Borven didn’t understand. Then he frowned at her.

  “What… Why would you… Why are you doing this for me?” With the records changed this mission would be an incredible success for him, and the promotion was a solid possibility once more.

  She looked at him. “I wanted to say I was sorry.” Tabitha shrugged. “I know I annoyed you, running off like that. Truth is, I’ve been…” She cleared her throat and looked away. “It’s not important. Anyway, I know you’ve been looking for Rotciv,” she pointed, “and here he is.”

  He eyed her. “Thank you. Will you, uh…” He scratched his head. “Can I do anything for you?”

  “Don’t think so.” She was already most of the way out the door, and she waved over her shoulder. “Byeeeee!”

  Borven stared after her and began to laugh. He shook his head and turned around in his chair to grab a piece of fruit, still chuckling.

  Ranger Two. What a character. He’d never met anyone quite like her before.

  Chapter 20

  Nickie

  Rebus Quadrant, Aboard the Penitent Granddaughter

  The flight had been calm, enough so that it was a bit hard to believe there had been a full-scale battle and execution just a few hours beforehand. Somehow, the fact that Grim and Nickie were enjoying a steak on the bridge seemed surreal in contrast to the earlier situation.

  “No Durq?” Nickie asked, talking around a full mouth as she shoveled in the last few bites of steak. “Or is he still hiding under his bed?”

  “He’s eating in his room,” Grim replied, his plate already empty. “I’m sure he’ll join us if he feels like it.”

  Nickie grunted in acknowledgment and Grim reached for the wine bottle. They were quiet as he refilled their glasses, until finally, he hedged carefully, “Quite a show you put on earlier with the captain.”

  Nickie snorted and lifted her glass to take a long gulp. “I thought it was pretty well done, yeah,” she agreed. “Besides, the fucker deserved it.”

  “No one said he didn’t,” Grim assured her and took a sip of wine. “It just seemed a touch…over-done. I mean, a public execution? Really? In front of a bunch of already-traumatized colonists?”

  Nickie scowled across the table at him and busied herself taking another long gulp of her wine. “None of them seemed to mind all that fucking much at the time,” she pointed out waspishly, folding her arms on the table and hunching over them. “They seemed right as rain.”

  “That’s not how PTSD works,” Grim reminded her blandly.

  Though she looked irritated, she conceded after a moment, “Maybe it was a bit much, but you can’t deny it had a dramatic effect.”

  Grim hummed in agreement, but it took a few seconds for him to respond verbally. He idly twirled the contents of his glass as he thought. “I suppose. But…I don’t know. You just seem angry about something.”

  The bridge lapsed into tense silence after that, as Nickie scowled down at the table and left Grim to simply wait for something to happen. Several minutes passed before she gulped the rest of her wine and set the glass down with more force than was strictly necessary.

  “I had an aunt,” she finally stated. “Well, have, I guess. She’s still out there. Big fucking deal with the Skaines. She was like their monster under the bed. And—God, I fucking adored her,” she grumbled, her hands tightening into fists against the table. “And you know what she does? She goes haring off into the galaxy with barely a backward glance like I’m just an afterthought. I never really know where she is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I never actually saw her again.”

  She glared at her glass as if the fact that it was empty had somehow personally offended her.

  Grim took a moment to finish his wine, steadying his nerves. “I know what that’s like, losing people you figured would always be there. It’s like part of the universe has been swallowed.”

  Nickie nodded along with what he said, her expression thoughtful. When she didn’t reply immediately, Grim asked slowly, “Have you heard about Borderline Personality Disorder?”

  She glared at him half-heartedly as she replied, “You aren’t a shrink, Dr. Armchair.”

  “I’m not,” he agreed readily, shrugging briefly. “But I wanted to be for a while before the rest of the universe decided not to cooperate.”

  He paused after that, watching her expectantly. It didn’t take long before she heaved a sigh and said, “Fiiiiiine. Shoot. Tell me about this borderline whatever-it-is.”

  “Borderline Personality Disorder is… Well, it can be a lot of things, but the crux is, it means someone is pathologically afraid of being abandoned,” he explained, running a finger around the edge of his wine glass just for something to do with his hands. “They either cling way too much to people they have, or they push them away to get it over with and have some control over it. Or they just refuse to reach out at all, so then no one gets a chance to leave.” He glanced up at her as he finished, “It can be pretty self-fulfilling, but it doesn’t actually have to be.”

  Nickie’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What are you getting at?”

  Grim sighed with exaggerated patience. “I’m saying that I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to just up and leave you.”

  There was silence in the room for a moment. Nickie frowned as she turned that thought over in her head as if trying to examine it from every angle. She jumped slightly when Grim leaned across the table to point a finger at her nose.

  “Which means,” he continued, “that you can stop being such a monumental jackass.”

  Nickie whooped out a startled bark of laughter, one hand flying up to clap over her mouth as Grim leaned away again, looking very satisfied with himself. She sniggered a few more times before she got herself under control enough to assure him, “I, uh… I’ll be sure to take that under advisement from now on!”

  When she calmed down, she leaned away from the table, stretching toward the captain’s chair. There was a tiny cupboard under it. It wasn’t
standard with the make and model of the ship, so she had to assume the captain had installed it. And good thing, too. Nickie popped the latch and pulled out a bottle of brandy.

  “Can I tempt you?” she asked, trying for coy and landing more in the ballpark of mischievous. If Grim minded, he didn’t show any indication.

  Instead, all he said was, “Don’t mind if I do.”

  The wine glasses weren’t clean, so they were perfectly content to just pass the bottle back and forth.

  Rebus Quadrant, Aboard the Penitent Granddaughter, Nickie’s Quarters

  Nickie lay on her bed, boots off now and wearing a night suit, reading the last part of the entry in her aunt’s diary.

  Grim had long since retired to his quarters, but his words about her personality traits echoed in her mind even as she read about her aunt’s adventures.

  As Nickie pondered, her consciousness drifting, she wondered again why her aunt would set up her entries to only reveal themselves now.

  Maybe she knew something about what Nickie would be facing? How she would be feeling?

  But then, what was she hoping Nickie would take from this story? That killing Skaines in anger isn’t good for her? It was pretty much what Grim had told her, albeit in a roundabout way.

  And what of this Angie? Was she comparing her pain—the pain of losing her favorite aunt—with the pain Angie was going through?

  It seemed a strange way to cast a story within a story. It must mean something.

  But Nickie wasn’t struggling with a broken heart.

  Or maybe that was the point.

  Maybe she was.

  And maybe she was using the theatrics and the rambunctiousness to…

  “No!” she called, then clamped a hand over her mouth.

  Shit.

  She listened, hoping no one else had heard her. It would be major-league embarrassing to explain to Grim that she was talking to herself.

  Okay, so maybe she did have feelings about her aunt still. Maybe it was heartbreak. But that could wait for another day.

  She needed to get some rest.

  Mere, lights out, please.

  As you wish.

  The lights in her quarters dimmed to blackness, leaving her to roll over under the covers and drift off into a well-deserved sleep.

  Chapter 21

  Tabitha

  Farha Station, Aboard the Achronyx

  In the main living area of the Achronyx, Tabitha gave a happy sigh and propped her feet up on the couch. It had been two days since she’d delivered Rotciv and his lieutenants to Borven, and since then the Achronyx had been docked at the station.

  At Borven’s pained request, she hadn’t gotten into any really good bar fights. But even he had admitted that station rules were station rules, and if individual bartenders didn’t mind the fights as long as she paid the tab, he wouldn’t intervene.

  So they’d been able to have some fun. She and Okk had even managed to come to an understanding—they both loved fights, and they both loved spitting crazy insults at people, so as soon as they saw each other in a bar, they’d start pounding on each other without any delay.

  She’d come to think of Okk as a good friend. Hirotoshi said she was crazy, and Tabitha privately thought that he was just mad that Okk kept insulting his looks.

  Hirotoshi didn’t like to let on, because he considered it a personal failing of his, but he was really very vain.

  Other than the bar fights, however, it had been a very slow couple of days. Don Guido had passed on a few tidbits of information that would lead to some good jobs—even a piece of information on a Skaine ship carrying stolen grain—but Tabitha was in no hurry. The grain would still be in the hold of that ship for a few more days.

  She could relax a little bit.

  She scrambled to sit properly when Hirotoshi came into the room. He tended to get on her case for putting her feet on the furniture. He only gave her an amused glance, however, and went to make himself some tea.

  She waited, curious. Hirotoshi hadn’t spoken to her privately since they had come back to Farha Station, and she still wasn’t sure what he had thought of her choice to turn Rotciv over to a government other than the Etheric Empire.

  When he came out of the small kitchen to take a seat he was smiling, however.

  “So…” he began.

  “So?” Tabitha crossed her legs and bounced slightly in her seat. “What about that gun, huh? Can take down trees.”

  “Perhaps not its most efficient use,” Hirotoshi replied diplomatically. “What I mean is, you don’t seem as disappointed as I expected.”

  “What do I have to be disappointed about?” Tabitha asked. She settled back in her seat, frowning in confusion.

  “Rotciv wasn’t Skaine,” Hirotoshi pointed out. “Your whole Skaine eradication plan…”

  “Oh.” Tabitha looked grumpy. “You want me to do all those push-ups. It’s going to take so long,” she complained. “So long.”

  “You lost that bet fair and square.” Hirotoshi took a sip of his tea. “But I wasn’t referring to the push-ups. I meant that you haven’t mentioned the Skaines since that operation. We figured we’d be following some more Skaine trails.”

  “Oh.” Tabitha shrugged. “I mean, I guess.” She put her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. She chewed on her lip. “I think I needed to work some stuff out about Shin’s death. I stopped thinking about why a Ranger exists. Borven reminded me. Rotciv reminded me. Don’t think I’ll go easy on any Skaines we find,” she added.

  Hirotoshi laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of being that stupid, Kemosabe.” He smiled at her. “It’s good to have you back.” He stood and went off to do…whatever it was that he did when he was alone. She had always pictured him doing a lot of paperwork, but she realized now that there wasn’t much paperwork to do.

  Maybe he read. She’d have to convince Achronyx to spy on him and tell her what he did. Then she could get him a book for Christmas.

  Tabitha smiled after him as he left and propped her chin on her knees.

  She still missed Shin terribly. She regretted his death. The pain hadn’t gotten any less since they had come to this sector. In fact, she could almost say his loss hurt more than it had before.

  But she wasn’t covering the hurt with anger anymore. She wasn’t on a blind quest for revenge.

  She was beginning to heal at last.

  Yoll Quadrant, QBSS Meredith Reynolds, Never Submit-Never Surrender Bar

  “And that was how it happened,” Tabitha finished. She drained her beer and smiled at Angie. “In the end, what it took was…”

  Her voice trailed off, and she waited for Angie to finish the sentence. She wondered what the gunnery officer had taken from this story. Angie struck her as a tangle of contradictions: fiercely competent but very unsure of herself, funny but shy, a dreamer unwilling to see that she was living her dreams.

  “You had to learn that no one could grieve for you,” Angie replied. She looked at Tabitha. “If you had taken their advice at the start, you wouldn’t have grieved. Grief is something you can’t skip.”

  Tabitha nodded. “That is a good way of saying it.” Lilah had set a new beer beside her, and she lifted it to clink it against Angie’s glass. “To Manny.”

  Angie didn’t hesitate. “To Shin.”

  The two women drank, and each pretended not to see the glitter of tears in the other’s eyes. People die in war, Lilah had said, and it was true. You became accustomed to it in a strange way, but Angie realized now that you never got over it.

  She wondered if she had been putting off her grieving because she was afraid to stop loving Manny, and decided she had. The idea of moving on with her life had seemed like a terrible betrayal of him.

  But she saw now that she was never going to forget him, and that her grief was killing her while she tried to keep it from running its course.

  Beside her, Tabitha considered as she drank, and now she said, “Sometimes it’s about who you share the sto
ry with that helps you get past the painful parts.” She nodded at Terrence. “Terrence here has listened to this story…what, twenty times?”

  Terrence laughed easily. “Thirty at least. And it gets better every time we hear it.”

  “You appreciate it more each time?” Angie guessed.

  He gave a wicked grin. “Well, that, and…let’s just say Ranger Two adds a bit of ‘flavor’ every time she tells it.”

  “She never contradicts herself, either,” George added. “Over the years, we’ve come to wonder if she’s just telling different parts of the same story.”

  “Or if she’s making stuff up,” Terrence added.

  Everyone laughed, including Tabitha. She gave Angie a conspiratorial wink. “A lady never tells.”

  Angie laughed and watched the regulars. She wondered what had brought each of them here to listen to Tabitha’s story. What loss had Terrence faced? What about George? She saw an older woman with streaks of gray just beginning to show in her blonde hair. The woman nodded at Angie and smiled.

  She had been inducted into a small club, she realized.

  “We’d love to hear about Manny,” Terrence suggested, “if you wanted to tell us.”

  Angie felt the instinctive desire to close everything off and stop speaking, but she forced her way through it and nodded. She held up one finger as she fought for composure.

  Finally, she said, “He was a Guardian Marine.”

  Everyone nodded appreciatively, and a smile broke over her face. “He loved it. It was everything to him, even the parts other people thought were a drag. Waking up at five for PT, for instance.”

  Everyone laughed, and a few people nodded knowingly.

  “He saw almost everything like that as an opportunity to get better,” Angie explained. “And the rest, well, he just told himself he’d get through it so he could go back to doing the stuff he really liked.”